John Calvin

1509–1564 · French (Noyon, Picardy) · Reformation Era

Known for: Built the most disciplined version of Protestantism — predestination, work ethic, and the idea that God already decided who's going to hell

John Calvin was a French theologian who became the most important second-generation Protestant reformer. His Institutes of the Christian Religion, first published at age 26 and revised throughout his life, is the most systematic work of Protestant theology ever written. He settled in Geneva and transformed it into a model Protestant city-state — a theocracy where moral discipline was enforced by the Consistory, a body that regulated everything from church attendance to card-playing.

His theology of predestination — that God has already determined who will be saved and who will be damned, before birth — is his most controversial and influential idea. Calvinism spread rapidly through Scotland (Presbyterianism), the Netherlands, France (Huguenots), England (Puritanism), and the American colonies. Max Weber argued that Calvinist work ethic created modern capitalism.

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